FinTech News

Google Pay Integrates P2P Payments, Mobile Tickets into App

Just a few months after officially morphing from Android Pay to Google Pay, the mobile wallet app is continuing to evolve and integrate additional services. As TechCrunch reports, the latest features being rolled out by Google Pay include peer to peer payments and support for mobile ticketing.

You may recall that peer to peer payments have been big news lately as data shows that the big bank-backed Zelle has quickly overtaken the popular Venmo with no signs of slowing. Additionally Google Pay’s support for P2P arrives after Apple Pay introduced their Apple Pay Cash offering late last year. In this case the feature will integrate with Google Pay, allowing users to tap any transaction they’ve made using the service and request to split it among up to five people.

Also being added to Google Pay is the Passes tab. This new feature will house mobile tickets and boarding passes alongside store loyalty cards and gift cards. At launch the ubiquitous ticketing service Ticketmaster and the budget-friendly airline Southwest will be supported in Google Pay’s Passes, some of the businesses on deck include Singapore Airlines, Eventbrite, and more.

To be sure, none of these features is necessarily new to Google itself. For example users were able to send and receive money via Google Pay Send, but now that functionality will be added to the flagship app (the future of Google Pay Send is seemingly dim although no timeline for its closure has been announced). Similarly mobile passes and tickets were previously supported in Google Now. However Google Pay Director of Product Management Gerardo Capiel says the company is purposely looking to put all these features into one place. As he told TechCrunch, “We’re working to bring everything into the app. Some things are a little trickier than others, for a number of reasons, but we will continue to make the experience as complete as possible.”

Beyond that goal, Capiel says Google Pay is hoping to launch in more countries. Notably the offering has also started to offer support on certain desktop browsers and even in iOS. Given Google’s prominence in all things online already, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that this consolidation of features technique coupled with an expansion of the app’s reach could help set Google Pay on the right track. After some past stumbles the company has experienced in the space, this would be a welcome win. If so, it can only mean good things for P2P, mobile payments, and FinTech adoption in general.

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